What Are You Doing In My Kitchen?
by Rose Black
Summary: A ficlet set one summer in the '70s. Contains Marauders, scones and bloody annoying tarts. Written for puredeadthingie, and is rather fluffy.


What Are You Doing In My Kitchen?

By Rose Black

Disclaimer: I do not own the Marauders, wish though I may. All characters (except the annoying tarts) belong to J. K. Rowling and Warner Bros. This fic(let) was written for a meme for puredeadthingie.

It had been fairly uneventful day, at the start. Sirius and James had both gotten up at the crack of dawn in order to go out for a fly through the forest and Peter had slept in, so the house was fairly quiet when Remus awoke. He went downstairs, skipping over the step that had been creaky even before James had fallen off the railing onto it, and made a quiet pot of tea, so that Sirius could complain about it not being strong enough when he got back.

After breakfast, they had actually done some homework, because what was the good of a holiday if you didn't provide some contrast to the exciting bits? Or so Remus had put forth, and Sirius and James had gone through one of their let's-keep-Remus-happy-so-that-we-can-make-him-do-whatever-we-want-later routines and complied. That had continued until lunchtime, after which Remus had left to see to Mrs. Langley's cats, as she had gone to Llandudno for a week. When he returned, he had to do a deal of poking around before he found his friends.

"What are you doing in my kitchen?" asked Remus, eyeing the array of implements scattered all over the room. "I hope you're going to clean up afterwards. Mum was furious last time."

"Relax, Moony," James replied easily. "We're making her scones."

"You know," added Sirius as he stirred the batter vigorously and splashed some of it on the floor, "to make up for yesterday, when she had to go lie down with an ice-pack."

Remus looked at the batter on the floor. Then he watched as Sirius put his trainer directly on top of it. "How wonderful of you. Very thoughtful."

As Peter came in, bearing a bucket of blueberries from the bushes behind the Lupins' house, Sirius and James began flicking batter at each other. They stopped as Remus burst into laughter despite himself, and laughed along with him.

"Come and help, Remus; you know you want to." James started washing off the blueberries as Sirius discovered that he had stepped in the batter. "So, Peter, what took you so long? You left ages ago."

Peter flushed. "Well, these girls, you see, the ones that live down the road, came up and then…"

Sirius snorted dismissively, while looking for something that was not a dish towel to wipe off his shoe. "Angela, Bonnie, and Pip? Bloody annoying tarts."

"Yes and anyway, they kept asking my opinion of their dresses, and they didn't like what I was saying because I kept telling them that I didn't know anything about dresses…"

"Why were they asking _you_ about dresses? Why were they asking anyone about their dresses?" James frowned. "As long as they're showing their legs up to their pants and have their necklines cut down as far as they can go, they're happy."

Sirius smirked. "I bet you wouldn't mind if a certain red-headed Prefect dressed like that." He yelped as James rubbed a handful of scone batter in his hair.

"But their dresses had this fringe all over them, and they said they were going to a costume party at your neighbours' tonight, and they asked if Sirius was going to be there…"

"Oh, right!" James slapped his forehead, then groaned when he realized that he still had batter on his hands. "That party! I forgot about it."

"What party?" Remus asked.

"They told me to tell you- well, no, they told me to tell Sirius- that there's going to be a "1920s America" themed costume party. They want to see Sirius dressed as a gangster." _This is a bad thing_, Remus thought. _A very bad thing_. He could easily imagine Sirius really getting into the spirit of the thing and spiking the punch with firewhiskey or something worse – though he had no idea how Sirius would have got it. That was the trouble with Sirius: he always really got into the spirit of the thing.

"Of course!" Sirius beamed. "I don't want to disappoint my adoring fans."

Just as James unceremoniously dumped the rest of the batter over Sirius' head, Mrs. Lupin wandered in. "Remus, dear, have you seen –" She stood still, eyes wide in astonishment.

"Hello, Mrs. Lupin," Sirius said with a winning smile. "Let me just escort you out – you see, we're making you scones – oh, don't step there – so we'll clean up and everything, I promise."


End file.
